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Heavy Japanese Support for Xbox 2

Posted by Zonk on from the no-home-court-advantage dept.

Gamasutra has word that there are already several Japanese game development studios and designers lining up to create titles for the Xbox 2 system. Yoshiki Okamoto, a former producer at Capcom, is quoted in the article as being surprised at the response the new console is getting. From the article: "I've been hearing that some other designers will also be joining. There are a lot of surprises. I find myself saying: 'What, this development studio!? This game!? These people!?'" Commentary on the upcoming console's Japanese future also available at GamesIndustry.biz. Update: 04/07 03:18 GMT by Z : The translations from the original source came from Gamespot.com.

2 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Resistance is futile... by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You will be assimilated.

    I'm not too surprised actually. Microsoft has been pushing hard and listening to what the Japanese developers want. (And probably throwing alot of money around as well)

    In that sense, I'm all for it. Microsoft's generally pretty good when competing.

    I'm worried, though, what happens if Microsoft "wins" the market.

    1. Re:Resistance is futile... by hawkbug · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, if M$ wins the market, you basically have what we had in a few different scenarios from the past:

      1) The original Playstation: It was around for a very, very long time - even after PC games looked a million times better due to evolving hardware. The PS2 didn't hit until 2001, and even then, it didn't seem to outdo computer games at all. It took the Xbox for Sony to really get serious in my opinion, and we'll have to see what the PS3 can do.

      2) Traditional Microsoft Monopoly, aka IE: Once Netscape was killed off, around 2000-2001 I'd estimate, Microsoft quit developing added features into IE. I don't care if IE 6 has a different version number, it's basically 5.0 with some security fixes, nothing really added feature wise. Not until XP SP2 did we see a pop up blocker, and a shitty one at that. Mozilla has them running scared right now in that department.

      3) Intel Pentium III: It was a fine chip, but slowly evolving and extremely overpriced. Once AMD debuted the Athlon, Intel was racing to keep up, and basically still is today. The AMD/Intel battle has done marvelous things for the computer industry, even though it may end up killing one of the companies off... not Intel because of their cash reserves I think, but if AMD screws up, they are probably sunk.

      It just goes to show that without serious competition, the market isn't forced to improve. If M$ can manage to kill Sony's game business unit (which is highly unlikely, but possible I suppose) it would probably just buy Nintendo, and whammo, XBox 3 won't come out until 2020.